Indigo Storm

by Fleur McDonald

  Eliza’s eyes widened. A bubble of laughter escaped her but it sounded like a snort.

  ‘Did you just snort?’ Heidi asked incredulously.

  ‘I may have,’ Eliza agreed. ‘Just a little bit. Now, are you two ready?’ Just then, the door slammed behind Chris, who was carrying two small eskies and a water bottle.

  ‘Lunch for two,’ he said, putting them in the back. ‘What time do you think you’ll be back?’

  Eliza glanced at her watch. ‘Maybe three-ish. Might be a bit later. How long will it take to get there?’

  They talked distances and then Chris handed over a book. ‘Here’s a bit of history on the places along the way, and this,’ he handed over some sheets of paper, ‘is a bit of info on the homestead itself.’

  ‘Brilliant, thanks. The satellite internet was so slow last night, I couldn’t download anything. I was going to do it when I got to Hawker.’

  Chris tapped the information pack. ‘It’s all there.’

  ‘Righto—in the car, you two,’ commanded Eliza. ‘Let’s get going.’

  ‘Try not to have an accident with my kids in the car,’ Chris said, as he tapped the roof of the ute and waved them goodbye.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Bye, Dad.’

  ‘See you, Dad.’

  On the way down, they played I Spy and numberplate bingo. Eliza stopped at Hawker and bought them each an ice-cream.

  A couple of hours later, they arrived at the Wilson cemetery and got out.

  Eliza shivered, even though the sun was shining. The cemetery was on a wide open plain between two sets of ranges and clearly hadn’t been tended in many years.

  The wind had picked up and it whistled around the headstones, making a strange moaning sound.

  The girls had tumbled out of the car, pleased to be free, but they froze when they sensed the eerie atmosphere.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ Tilly said, moving alongside Eliza and slipping her hand into hers. ‘It’s scary.’

  ‘It’s only the wind that makes it scary,’ Eliza said calmly. ‘It makes horrible, creepy noises, but if it wasn’t windy, there wouldn’t be any noise except for the crows and magpies. I expect you’d be able to hear sheep. See, there’s some over there at the bottom of that hill.’ She pointed to a mob grazing. ‘I’m sure there’s a galah or two around to make a bit of noise too!’ She stopped and looked at Heidi and Tilly. ‘I bet you could hear the traffic from the road. Look, see—there’s a truck.’

  Tilly seemed unconvinced.

  ‘Come on, Tilly,’ her sister said impatiently and walked through the gate. ‘Anyway, whoever’s in here is dead and has been forever, so they can’t hurt you.’

  Even after reassuring the girls about the graveyard, Eliza had to admit to herself that she felt unnerved, especially after reading a sign saying there were people buried in unmarked graves. She wouldn’t know if she were treading on a spot where people had stood a hundred years ago, burying a loved one.

  She imagined the men, dressed in trousers with braces, and dirty shirts. The women would have worn black skirts and white shirts, perhaps with aprons. Hats would have been a must.

  The burning sun would have shone down on the cracked earth where the men laboured to dig holes deep enough to bury the dead.

  Maybe a horse-drawn carriage carried a plain wooden box, or maybe there was a handcrafted coffin carried by four or six men. It would have all depended on the deceased’s family’s money and standing in the community.

  Eliza explained all this to the girls as they wandered around the graveyard, reading the engravings on the stones.

  ‘There’s so many rabbit holes,’ Heidi said. ‘Some of them are so deep, I wonder if you can see the coffins.’ She stopped and peered down into a deep, dark one.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’

  ‘Can we go?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘You can go and hop in the car, if you like. I just want to have a read of this sign again. Have a listen to this—it’s a good example of how tough life was here back in the eighteen-hundreds.

  ‘One family had five children die over five years and then the mum died too. Oh, look at the dates: she must have died while she was having the baby. See here? “Adelaide Frances died 1890”.’ Eliza checked the information Chris had given her. ‘But, see here, there was a Harriet Frances born in 1890 too. I love exploring this type of family history. It’s so interesting.

  ‘And here,’ she flicked over another page. ‘This is a newspaper report. “It has been so very hot these last three weeks. Two children have perished because of the heat.’’’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Heidi said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Have we got any relatives in here?’

  Eliza turned to the back of the book and ran her finger down the list of names of people who were buried in the Wilson cemetery.

  ‘No, there aren’t any Maynards that I can see,’ she said. Her eyes flicked further down the page, to see if there were any other names that were familiar to her.

  There weren’t.

  Chapter 14

  Eliza tried to calm her racing mind as they arrived at the Kanyaka ruins.

  She pulled her hat down further over her face and made sure her sunglasses were in place as she got out of the car. The car park was full of tourists towing caravans, and people were wandering about, cameras strung round their necks.

  It had been easy to get complacent about her disguise while she’d been at Blinman, but now she was suddenly faced with people who could have seen her picture on the news a few months ago. They might find her face familiar. She couldn’t risk it.

  Along the edge of a creek were the remains of a large building and a few smaller ones. They covered such a large area that Eliza was awestruck. The chimneys towered into the sky and, although there weren’t any roofs on any of the buildings, the ruins were surprisingly intact, with parts of walls having been restored. Ivy was growing up through some of the fireplaces and a lone palm tree stood outside.

  ‘Come on, girls, let’s look at the cemetery first.’ She pointed to a few headstones on a flat piece of land at the base of a high hill.

  ‘Do we have to?’ Tilly asked. She hung back and looked over at the large building.

  ‘You’re such a scaredy-cat,’ Heidi muttered, flouncing off down the path that led across the stony creek bed.

  Eliza went to Tilly and put her hand on her shoulder. ‘Honestly, there’s nothing there that can hurt you. I know this is hard and a bit frightening, but it’s part of your project and will help you understand something of the way people lived in the olden days.’

  ‘Can I play in the creek while you look at it? I’ll go and look at the buildings with you first, I promise.’

  Eliza agreed. It was a good compromise.

  As they wandered around, couples walked past and smiled while nodding hello. Both children were open and chatty with the tourists—after all, they spent most of their time in a national park, close to where people camped—but Eliza kept her distance.

  ‘Come on, Heidi,’ she called when she spotted the girl showing a woman something high in a gum tree. Looking up, she saw a bird different from any she’d seen before. She smiled to herself, realising Heidi would be giving the tourist a lecture about the bird.

  Eliza waited at a distance and watched Heidi not break stride in her passionate delivery. The woman seemed impressed at her level of knowledge and asked a couple of questions.

  ‘Come on, Heidi,’ Eliza called again when she noticed her finally take a breath.

  With a flick of her ponytail, Heidi ran over. ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘See what?’ Eliza adjusted her sunglasses, and scanned the ruins.

  ‘The chirruping wedgebill,’ she answered in a tone suggesting Eliza was stupid not to know.

  ‘Heidi,’ Eliza said, amused, ‘I don’t even know what that is, so how would I have seen it?’

  ‘It’s a bird. They’re really unusual here. I’ll have to make sure
I tell Dad about it.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be really interested.’

  ‘Oh yeah! We’ve got to tell him whenever we see a bird or animal that’s really rare. He always wants to know things like that. Then he can point tourists in the direction they were seen last.’

  Tilly piped up, ‘Yeah, but sometimes they go to see them and spend hours watching and they never appear.’

  ‘That’s why they’re called rare. Duh.’

  ‘Heidi, that’s enough,’ Eliza said sternly. She turned to Tilly. ‘I guess if they’re birds, they can fly to a different area.’

  ‘Yeah, but that chirruping wedgebill will have a nest around here somewhere,’ Heidi answered.

  ‘Okay, girls, let’s focus on why we’re here. Have you noticed the stone wall?’

  Both girls nodded.

  ‘It was nearly forty kilometres long! Can you imagine how long that would have taken to build? And this house here . . .’ she pointed to the large homestead. ‘This had sixteen rooms! And later, up on the road, there was a two-storey, twenty-roomed hotel.’ She shook her head incredulously. ‘Wow, that’s almost like a mini town.’

  The three stood together and looked around. The stones that had been used were large and would have been extremely heavy to lift, and the pug to hold them together would have to have been mixed by hand.

  ‘I can’t imagine how they did this,’ Eliza said quietly. ‘Stables, outhouses, shearers’ quarters. They had everything they could want. I bet they employed a full-time cook and maids. They would have had to grow their own food—the veggie patch would have been huge.’

  Goosebumps broke out on her skin. There would have been so many stories to tell, if only these walls could speak.

  Eliza drove into the national park and pulled up at Chris’s house. She got out and looked in wonder at the purply pink sunset reflecting off the hills. Sometimes the hills looked white, like sand dunes. Other times they were a deep blue or indigo purple. She was sure she wouldn’t ever tire of that view.

  Her fingers itched for her camera, but she couldn’t do anything with it until she had the girls safely inside and by then the good light would be gone.

  Eliza had emailed a photo of the sunset she had taken near one of the camping sites to an online competition. A towering gum was its main focus but, behind it, the evening’s colours had given the tree an outline of indigo and gold.

  The car door opened and Heidi appeared, rubbing her eyes, Tilly following her a few moments later.

  Eliza smiled fondly at them.

  Chris came out and took one look at his daughters before saying, ‘Shower time, I think.’ Heading back inside, he called over his shoulder, ‘Pour yourself a glass of wine.’

  Eliza hoisted the eskies up and took them inside.

  ‘I think they’ll be asleep before you can feed them,’ she said when Chris came into the kitchen.

  ‘Nah, those two ferals’ll be raring to go again once they’ve had a shower. Especially if they slept on the way back.’

  ‘I reckon they would have had a good hour’s worth.’

  Chris nodded. ‘Yep. I’ll expect shouts, laughs and fights any time after they get out of the shower. Did you get yourself a drink?’

  ‘No, I need to get back to Blinman. But thanks for the offer.’ She turned to go but Chris put his hand on her arm.

  She flinched.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m tired too,’ she said, hoping he hadn’t noticed her reaction. ‘Oh, but I did have one thing to ask.’ She turned back to him. ‘Do you have any more books on the ruins around here? I was fascinated by the history in the Wilson cemetery. So many deaths.’

  ‘Yeah, there were. I tell you, it was tough country back then. People these days don’t know how much easier it is, even if there is a drought.’ He turned and walked out of the room.

  Eliza raised her eyebrows at his retreating back as Jacob flashed into her mind. She wondered why Chris would say something like that when his own brother had struggled so badly.

  Chris came back in, carrying another book. He waved it at her before handing it over.

  ‘Thanks,’ Eliza responded, flipping to the back, wanting to see if there was another register of people who had lived in the area. Details of names and dates were of great interest to her.

  ‘Did you take the girls to Death Rock?’

  ‘No, we were running out of time, so I said we’d go there another time. I really wanted to see the Kanyaka waterhole too.’

  ‘There’s lots of good history just around here,’ Chris said as he went to the fridge and got out a beer. ‘Sure you don’t want a drink?’

  Eliza hesitated. ‘Something soft,’ she said finally. She was torn between wanting to hear more about the history of the area and wanting to run out the door.

  It wasn’t that Chris frightened her—she was only as wary of him as she was of any bloke. And she was still sure he didn’t have any thoughts beyond friendship. On the other hand, she wasn’t going to do anything that could be misconstrued as a signal.

  Chris handed her a lemonade and pulled a packet of sausages out of the fridge.

  ‘There’s plenty of iconic places around about.’

  Eliza sat on a bar stool and opened her lemonade. ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s the Hunter shearing shed. About twenty minutes’ drive from here. Then there’s Jacka’s cave—it’s said a drover spent the night there and was visited by a min min light, which spooked all the cattle and they ran over him. Killed him, of course.’

  ‘Hell, that’s tragic.’

  ‘This country is full of suicides and other deaths. But that’s the way life is out here.’ Chris put the sausages into the frying pan and got out three plates. ‘I’m betting I can’t get you to stay for tea?’

  Eliza shook her head. ‘I actually have a meeting I need to get to a bit later.’

  ‘Ah, what’s Reen roped you into?’

  ‘We’re trying to raise money for the Frontier Services,’ Eliza answered, and went on to tell him about her idea.

  Chris listened as he set out salad and turned the sausages.

  ‘What about using Forget-me-not Well, out on the boundary of the Caulders’ and my brother’s place?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I meant to tell you I met Jacob. Hasn’t he got a sad story? That’s why we’re raising money. It was his idea. He said the service is really short on funds at the moment.’ Eliza saw a strange expression cross Chris’s face. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Not at all.’ He turned off the gas and looked at her. ‘My brother is pretty soft. Jacob was mollycoddled as a kid. He had a rocky start to life and Mum always wrapped him up in cottonwool. I’m not saying he didn’t have a real problem back when things got a bit rough but I reckon he needs to toughen up a bit. And I’m pretty certain I won’t be popular for saying that.’

  ‘Oh.’ Eliza tried to keep her face neutral as she felt shock pass through her.

  ‘Look, I see it like this. If life throws you lemons, make lemonade. If it was such tough going, then maybe he should take himself out of the farming business and take up something that doesn’t stress him out. It’s a choice thing. See where I’m going?’

  ‘But, Chris, mental health is a different thing altogether. That’s like saying: “Oh, if cancer slows you down, then change jobs.”’

  ‘Not at all. If you have cancer, you do something about it, don’t you? You go to the doctor, have treatment. You do whatever’s recommended. If you ignore the advice, you’ve got a fair idea that you won’t like the outcome. Same with my brother. My parents asked him to sell the station quite a few years ago. He wouldn’t. Too attached to it. But it’s the cause of the stress and therefore the mental health issues.’

  Eliza felt torn. In one way, what he said was commonsense, but in another she knew it could never be that easy.

  She decided to change the subject.

  ‘What was the well you were talking about? I�
�m sure I’ve heard Jacob mention it before.’

  Chris gave her a look. ‘Whiplash,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll get whiplash if you keep changing the subject as quick as that. There’s so many stories about that well. It’s like a little oasis in the middle of a dry and dusty landscape. There’s a really nice little grove not far from it and I know people have been married there. There’s been a couple of suicides and, I’m sure, in earlier times, probably people born there, but it’s certainly got a lot of history.’

  ‘You mentioned it was on the border of Jacob’s property?’

  Chris nodded. ‘Mmm, and Mary and John Caulder’s. Very old family friends of ours.’

  Eliza felt a shiver of excitement run through her. She remembered that Caulder was the name of the people in the article.

  ‘How awful about the suicides,’ she said, trying to contain herself. ‘Does anyone know why people killed themselves there?’

  ‘Girls! Tea’s ready. I don’t know, I’ve just heard that there’s spirits who are supposed to haunt the well. An old wives’ tale, of course, I don’t believe in shit like that, but some of the locals swear by it.’

  ‘How tragic.’ Eliza got up. ‘I’ve really got to go,’ she said. ‘Can you just make sure that Tilly does that assignment with her grandmother before they leave? I won’t be back before they do it, I don’t think.’

  A strange expression crossed Chris’s face. ‘They left today.’

  ‘What? Just like that?’ Eliza asked incredulously. ‘Without saying goodbye to the girls?’

  Chris shrugged. ‘It’s the way they are. Don’t think about anyone except themselves. They turn up when they want to, expecting a free site, even though Claire isn’t here anymore, then leave. Usually without saying goodbye. It suits me when they leave. They piss me off.’

  Eliza wanted to ask about Claire, but didn’t. He would tell her if he wanted to.

  ‘So, what about Tilly’s assignment?’ she wondered out loud.

  ‘I reckon she might as well go and talk to Mary and John. They’re close enough to us to be her grandparents. I’ll organise it so you can go out and see them.’